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Buescher to work in Attorney General’s Office

Former Secretary of State Bernie Buescher is going to be a lawyer again.

The Grand Junction resident and former Democratic state legislator for House District 55 is expected to officially announce later today that he has accepted a job with Republican Attorney General John Suthers to run one of his office’s biggest divisions.

Starting March 1, Buescher will head the state services branch of the office that oversees legal matters for, among other things, the Secretary of State’s Office.
Buescher lost that position in last fall’s elections to Republican Scott Gessler, who was sworn into the job earlier this month.

“It won’t be weird (advising Gessler) because Scott and I have talked about this and we both understand the legal aspects of the job,” Buescher told The Daily Sentinel on Monday, a day before the announcement became official. “We both want to make sure that Scott gets the best legal representation as possible.”

Coincidentally, the last person to hold that job was another Grand Junction native, Monica Marquez, who left the position late last year when she was nominated to be the state’s newest justice on the Colorado Supreme Court.

The section Buescher will head also provides legal services to more than 20 state colleges and universities and all statewide elected officials, including the governor’s office.
Gov. John Hickenlooper not only congratulated Buescher on his new job, but praised Suthers for naming him to it.

“It says volumes about two remarkable people,” the Democratic governor said. “Bernie Buescher has played so many different roles in our state government, and is obviously so well-intentioned and so smart that I think he’ll do great things there.

“But it also says volumes about John Suthers,” the governor added. “The hidden story is that John Suthers is demonstrating true bipartisanship that should make everybody in the state feel proud. This is just another demonstration that John Suthers is trying to make decisions that help all of Colorado.”

The section also provides legal services to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, the State Board of Education and several state departments, such as Health and Human Services, and Labor & Employment.

“Bernie Buescher is uniquely qualified due to his service as head of state agencies under multiple governors to be an effective advocate for those agencies,” said Mike Saccone, Suthers’ spokesman. “The attorney general is convinced that Bernie Buescher will provide excellent advocacy and prove to be an excellent manager of the state services section.”

Before being appointed secretary of state in 2008, Buescher served in the Colorado House for four years. Prior to that, he was president of Grand Junction-based West Star Aviation. In the 1990s, he was appointed by then-Gov. Roy Romer to reorganize the Colorado State Fair and later served as executive director of the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing under Romer.

From 1975 to 1986, he was a practicing attorney in the Grand Junction law firm of William, Turner and Holmes.